If aliens are marching into Times Square, or a garishly-costumed superhero is fighting a bad guy atop the Empire State Building, most onlookers will take the event at face value. But others, even if they live in a world where strange things are known to happen on a regular basis, will dismiss it as "some nutty publicity stunt," an advertising campaign, or perhaps location shooting for a science-fiction movie.

Frequently observed as an aspect of living in a City of Weirdos. Occasionally, characters might intentionally invoke the trope as a way of maintaining The Masquerade, but in most cases people don't need any "help" to dismiss the weird stuff.

Sister trope to Is This a Joke?, but in that trope, the character believes the strange events to be a joke directed specifically at her, or perhaps at a smallish group of people. The effects in Some Nutty Publicity Stunt are usually too widespread, elaborate, or large to be written off as mere pranks.

The inverse of You Just Ruined the Shot, in which actors are mistaken for the real thing. See also All Part of the Show, in which the strange events are thought to be part of some specific public performance, and Your Costume Needs Work, which is when a person thinks a particular character is wearing a costume but isn't (includes everything from monsters to celebrities).

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Used more than once in Mahou Sensei Negima!, both in the Magical World and during the Mahora Festival.

In Dragonball Z the characters once were Genre Savvy enough about this trope, so they summoned Porunga in the middle of a city, knowing that most people would just assume it was some experimental hologram from Bulma's Mad Scientist dad.

Used briefly in Turn A Gundam. When Queen Dianna unseals The Dark History, huge holograms showing the wars of past eras pop up in cities across the Moon, causing confusion and panic in the citizens. Except for the Fat Bastard leader of the Goldfish Poop Gang, who just glances at the holograms and goes "Eh, most be some sort of movie-promotion." His team eventually manages to convince him otherwise...

A first season episode of Digimon uses this, when one of the kids falls into the river and his digimon has to save him and the crowd from an evil squid-digimon.

Comic Books

Wonder Woman provoked what may have been the first comic book appearance of this trope, in one of her earliest adventures. Stealing a car from some Axis agents, they start shooting at her. As Wonder Woman deflects the bullets of one bad guy's tommy gun (with one hand) while driving off, the other says "I saw her on the stage! Let her go, she's probably doing some publicity stunt!" Which shows you how they lost the war. Makes more sense than most since Wonder Woman's first public appearance, in the previous story, was on the stage, showing off her "Bullets and Bracelets" trick.note Sensation Comics #2 (1942)

Invoked extremely often in Marvel Comics, particularly those written by Stan Lee. Bystanders who see fantastical superhero action inevitably exclaim "Ah, must be some publicity stunt!" or "They must be filming some nutty new sci-fi movie!" Curiously, this means the populace seems to think New York City is positively infested with publicists and filmmakers (Truth in Television?). Based on the sheer number of appearances, this might be Stan Lee's favorite trope.

After the first appearance (and then disappearance) of Galactus, this is J. Jonah Jameson's theory of the event. A bystander remarks, however, "I've learned that the best thing to do is read Jameson's editorials and then believe exactly the opposite!"note Fantastic Four #50 (1966)

One bystander reacts to the first appearance of Ms. Marvel by saying "It's an act! A publicity stunt! Like that gag at the World Trade Center with the styrofoam King Kong!" Ms. Marvel's thought balloon lampshades the trope a bit: "Can she believe that? Are people really so cynical — or is such an attitude peculiar to New York?"note Ms. Marvel #1 (1977)

Stan Lee was using this trope as early as 1952, in the story "Skull-Face" (excerpted here by Bully the Little Stuffed Bull). It's the story of an inventive publicist for a horror movie called Skull-Face. His plan is to "make the whole world 'Skull-Face' conscious!" And it works! A little too well, actually, as the publicity campaign somehow revives or creates the "real" Skull-Face (perhaps in a variant of Gods Need Prayer Badly?) Skull-Face attacks the publicist, who calls the police... who, knowing him, dismiss the call: "That guy'll do anything to get in the papers! Forget it!"note Mystery Tales #6 (1952)

One story has Donald and Fethry Duck fleeing down the street from a demon before sucking it into a ghost trap-like device. The onlookers decide that they're watching an advertisement for a new vacuum cleaner.

Invoked in Worlds Finest#186, where Superman and Batman travel back in time to Colonial New England (It Makes Sense in Context), then pass off their superhero costumes as actors promoting an upcoming theater company.

In one DuckTales cartoon, the police refuse to help Uncle Scrooge get King Kong off his money bin. Instead they give him "one hour to remove that unauthorized balloon ad or whatever it is."

The Beagles, a CBS cartoon from 1966 (made by Leonardo-TTV, the folks who gave us Underdog) dealt with two impoverished musical canines, Stringer and Tubby, and the outrageous publicity stunts their agent Scotty puts them in.

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